Practice psychometric tests
& University admissions tests
"The most comprehensive list of practice psychometric tests & questionnaires available on the web. Essential preparation for graduates, job hunters and those revising for university entrance tests..." UK Jobs Network, 2010.
Graduate or executive selection test? University admissions test? Before you take an assessment you can find free psychometric test & questionnaire practice questions on many of the websites listed below. Using this material will not transform your abilities but it will increase your confidence. And the more confident you are, the more questions you will attempt and the better your results are likely to be.
Who uses tests? Psychometric testing is becoming increasingly common with up to 75% of medium to large sized organisations, and 95% of FTSE Top 100 companies, using tests or questionnaires during the recruitment process. Psychometrics, such as personality questionnaires and 360-degree (multi-rater) feedback systems, are also playing a growing part in graduate, management and leadership development, and appraisal & training.
What do tests measure? Tests are typically used for graduate or managerial level selection with verbal, numerical and abstract (non-verbal) reasoning being the most frequently assessed abilities. Try this test (PfS™). Personality 'tests' (more accurately described as questionnaires - they are not really tests as there are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers) are used less and tend to be administered at the interview, or Assessment Centre stage, after candidates have been sifted on the basis of their test results. They are often used to assess the 'Big Five' personality factors (O.C.E.A.N).
Tell me about the Big Five. Personality questionnaires provide information on how open we are to variety and new experiences (Openness),
our consistency of performance and level of self-organisation (Conscientiousness),
the way we relate to other people & the world (Extraversion),
our tendency to value feelings and cooperate with others (Agreeableness),
and the ways in which we control tension & emotion ('Neuroticism'). Want to know how you stand on the Big Five traits? Try this questionnaire (IPIP-NEO).
What's the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®? This is the personality questionnaire that everyone seems to have heard about. It is based on four sets of preferences, relating to how you prefer to direct your energy (Extraversion-Introversion), process information (Sensing-INtuition), make decisions (Thinking-Feeling) and organise your life (Judging-Perceiving). Having completed the MBTI you end up with a four letter code (eg: ENFJ) that describes your personality. However, whilst this and similar 'type' questionnaires are extremely popular, they are not used to select people for jobs. Want to know your psychological type? Try this questionnaire (MMDI™).
And what about IQ? The tests that are used to select people for jobs are not IQ tests. Obviously they are looking at how you apply your intelligence, but IQ is (usually) calculated as the ratio of your mental age (as measured by an intelligence test) to your actual (chronological) age, multiplied by 100. So if your mental age is the same as your actual age you will have an IQ of 100 (average), and if your mental age is greater than your actual age, your IQ will be greater than 100 etc. The highest recorded IQ score is 230.
Alright, but how does this differ from 'emotional' intelligence? Completely different! Basically emotional intelligence (EI) concerns your ability to 'manage' your personality - or to put it another way, to bring thinking into how you feel (and understand what's going on inside yourself), and feeling into how you think and act with other people (being 'intelligent' about dealing with others at an emotional level). However claims that 90% of the performance of successful managers & leaders is down to EI are probably somewhat overcooked... Have a look at this CIPD article.
What gets used the most? Looking at those employers that use psychometrics, the chances of encountering different types of tests and questionnaires are:
Note: The percentages are not mutually exclusive.
What's the bottom line? If you're talking about money, the latest research suggests that the productivity benefit that flows from using objective assessments (e.g. tests) is 1.7% of overall turnover. May not sound like much but 1.7% of a big number is also a sizeable number!
How are tests administered? Tests and questionnaires are traditionally delivered in paper-and-pencil format, or via a PC, and of course online psychometric testing is also becoming standard practice. However, the results from such 'remote' administrations are usually corroborated at the interview stage by additional tests and exercises.
What do the results mean? The results of ability tests are expressed in terms of percentiles, eg: you have scored at the 65%ile. What this means is that compared to a representative sample who have completed the test in the past, you have scored in the top 35%, or conversely, you have done better than 65% of the population. See example feedback report (PfS Numerical). With trait-based personality questionnaires results are often described using a STEN (Standard Ten) scale: 4-7 fall into the 'average' range, and 1-3 & 8-10 are 'low' and 'high', respectively. See example personality profile (15FQ+).
Do tests work? The two ways of knowing if a test works are to look at its reliability (stability & consistency) and validity (does it predict performance). Both of these can be quantified through correlations. Thus tests are expected to have reliabilities in excess of 0.7, a strong correlation meaning that each question is related to the overall score. As for validity, where we look at whether a test predicts, say, work performance, a good result is 0.4+. Note this does not mean that it works 40% (4/10) of the time! It indicates how much the test (predictor) 'overlaps' with another relevant measure (criterion).‡
What happens if I have a disability? If you think there are reasons why you may be disadvantaged by the use of psychometric tests you can look at the SHL best practice guidelines, or seek advice from the excellent RNIB (visual problems) and BPS Testing Centre (Dyslexia) guides.
And what's all this about university tests? A number of universities are employing tests such as the Law National Admissions Test (LNAT) and UK Clinical Aptitude Test (UKCAT), in addition to examination results, personal statements & interviews, to select candidates for competitive degree programmes such as law, medicine, dentistry and veterinary science.
University admissions tests are similar to those used in commercial settings, but may include knowledge-based components, or more specialised assessments such as the Decision Analysis Test (DAT). The DAT, which looks at how well a person can make informed judgements in situations of increasing complexity & ambiguity, is used in the medical school entry test, the UKCAT.
Useful books. One of the most popular books is How to Master Psychometric Tests (4th Edition). This is a good primer for anyone who wants to know about tests and to have access to plenty of practice material. For more great books, by a variety of authors, go to my
Amazon bookstore.
There are also many freely available articles on tests & testing, just try one of the organisations below.
Graduate & Managerial jobs! If you wish to purchase practice tests because you are applying for a graduate scheme, or a management level job, the verbal, numerical and abstract ability tests available via Dr Test are a useful and cost effective starting point - these tests are used in graduate, management and medical school recruitment. The benchmarked reports give a valid & reliable indication of your core aptitudes.
Practice & example tests, online questionnaires and assessment centre exercises. All the websites on this page provide useful material - so for example if you're worried about numerical tests you will find plenty of practice questions. However for graduate & executive assessment you may like to start with those flagged: G; for university entrance: U (& the separate section at the bottom of the page); and for development: S. For more basic tests of aptitude and/or skill, try: B.
More tests & questionnaires? As well as clicking on the extensive list below you can use Google Custom Search. This has been specially configured to look for additional psychometric tests and questionnaires.
Tutor Hunt (Need help & extra tuition? Free tutor finding service)
Tutors4Me (Find private tutors {no fee} in a range of academic subjects). NEW!
A number of people have contacted me to say that they have 'road tested' the following books which are particularly helpful for applicants to medical school.
All are available from Amazon, but make sure you buy the latest editions! Some, such as Getting into Medical School, are revised each year.
Career in Medicine: Do you have what it takes? by Rameen Shakur
Getting into Medical School by James Burnett
Medical School Interviews by George Lee & Olivier Picard
The Insiders' Guide to UK Medical Schools by Sally Girgis et al.
For all these medical books, and more, go to my Amazon bookstore.
Job sites. A selection of useful job boards & information sources:
Want more tests? Custom Search is set-up to find extra sites and is 'tuned' to relevant keywords (opens in separate window, click on browser 'back' button to return to this page).
Custom Search
About this page. The list on this page was compiled by Dr. Mark Parkinson. Mark is a Chartered Psychologist, Test & Questionnaire Designer and a Press Spokesman for the British Psychological Society (BPS). He advises businesses, not-for-profit organisations and universities on assessment, selection and development matters.
For the more technically minded many online tests are distributed by the Performance Assessment Network (Pan). So if you're interested in psychometric testing and using tests & questionnaires in a professional context this is a good place to start. However bear in mind that reputable tests are only available to trained individuals. Details from the BPS Online Testing Centre
. Also if you would like to know
how psychologists or employers link personal attributes to assessment methods, look at the Rapid Assessment or US Office of Personnel Management websites; and for those interested in becoming a management consultant, try
Consultancy Links.
Report a broken link, or a new site that you would like to see listed. Number of sites = 317.
Note. You can change the size of the text on this page using your Ctrl and + or - keys.
Webmasters. To have a site considered for inclusion it must contain some free and/or obviously useful practice material. It is also usual for a reciprocal link to be made to this web page.
Disclaimer. Mark does not control the contents of the sites listed, excepting Dr Test (www.drtest.co.uk), and all links are provided in good faith. Those that are listed were found to contain useful practice tests, questionnaires or other material at the time of their inclusion. No guarantee can be given with regard to current contents or affiliations. The fact that a link to a website, or other resource, is included, does not constitute a professional recommendation.
® The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a registered trademark of the Myers-Briggs Indicator Trust. The UK distributor of the MBTI is Oxford Psychologists Press (OPP) Ltd. The Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ) is a registered trademark of Saville & Holdsworth Ltd (SHL). Wave is a registered trademark of Saville Consulting.
‡The magnitude of the correlation is influenced by the accuracy of the measures. Work-based criterion measures are often relatively innacurate or limited leading to what look like modest correlations (eg: 0.4); but if you compare with accurate measures, say, another test, the correlation can be much higher, often in the region of 0.8. Also see this article on incremental validity.
* Tests are powered by Profiling for Success (PfS™) and include Verbal, Numerical and Abstract Reasoning, and the Decision Analysis Test. Apart from the UKCAT website itself (www.ukcat.ac.uk), Dr Test is the only source of practice tests which are the direct parallels of the official admissions (entrance) tests. There is a charge for taking the tests.
